His Wrath
Did he, Ahab, suppose that he and wife
Would pass their golden years before the hearth,
He content to scrim his ivory peg,
To carve the whale in imagery within
Its murky grave and judge the score èven?
Revenge by nature sweet, or sweeter is
The dream of such—Ahab, by visions wracked,
Gone unavenged, galled by pain that might breach
And breach again unto eternity.
So sweet it was to be, by nature or
By dream, his death a trifling act anon
The barb, the lance, the cutting spade, the chain,
The hoist, the boiling pots to try—his wrath
He swears, before a spiked and golden oath—
I look, you look, he looks; we look, assuage
The bitten pain, that for a pious man
Gone foul, afoul of parted lines, that all
Would die but one, while sweet revenge rolls on.
~
"I look, you look, he looks; we look,"
~Herman Melville, "Moby Dick"
Poetry by jim
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Written on 2017-06-19 at 00:08
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